As regular readers of this blog will know, back in 2009, SI briefly claimed the top spot on the traffic ranking engines during the summer (see this post). Before then, it was in the number two position for quite some time, and, according to these traffic ranking sites, remained strong in the number two position until about last summer. Then, about the same time that most of the major ranking engines starting introducing premium accounts and services, it started falling — rapidly — even though traffic has been holding steady, and often increasing 2% to 3% month over month, for the past year.

According to these respected traffic ranking sites, which used to at least be directionally accurate, it now gets between 1,000 and 6,000 visits per month. Are you fracking kidding me? On average, SI gets between 4,300 and 5,000 visits per day, which averages out to between 30,000 and 35,000 visits per week, and between 125,000 and 150,000 visits per month (which translates to somewhere between 1.5 and 1.8 Million visits per year). Not Perez Hilton traffic by any stretch of the imagination, but still quite respectable in this space!

Here’s a snapshot of traffic that I took a few days ago using the built in statistics tool in the GoDaddy QuickBlog hosting service. Between May 22, 2012 and May 29, 2012, SI received between 3,500 and 5,500 visits each day and over 36,000 visits in that week.

However, if I pay for premium membership, most of the traffic ranking sites will allow me to install (updated / more accurate) traffic monitoring capabilities (which translates into custom javascript / image loads) that will allow the sites to track my traffic more accurately (and do what GoDaddy and Google do for free). I don’t know about you, but if this isn’t an SEO scam legitimized, I don’t know what is. (Short story, I’m miffed, not giving them a dime and they can all go to heck!)

Has anyone had similar experiences with these sites over the past year?